MUSEUM FATIGUE

Why I Love the Gideon Bible People

September 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Every school year begins with the anxiety of meeting new people, starting new classes and getting into the rhythms of higher education. For nearly as long as I have worked at our school it has also been the time of the return of the Gideons. During the first few weeks of school, before the weather gets too chilly, a few of them usually visit campus for a few hours in late morning to mid afternoon. They stand on the sidewalks […]

Categories: Bodies, Objects of Power, Space • Tags: belief, freedom of speech, Gideon Bible, public space, Religion

Good Food: First Day Food Activity

August 31, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This semester I am teaching a first year seminar (FYSEM) called Good Food: Eating and Culture. The primary goal of the class—in addition to all of the standard introduction-to-college kinds of things required of all FYSEMs—is to consider what makes a food “good.” Humans can and do eat pretty much everything on the planet that won’t kill them, but what makes something good to eat is primarily dependent on sociocultural contexts. Eating is an intimate, personal act of taking something […]

Categories: Assignments, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: class activity, First Year Seminar, food, Good Food, Hamline University, students

The Egyptian Statue That Looks Like Michael Jackson

August 20, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Tell me this doesn’t look like him. Many years ago I took a photo of a sculpture in the Egyptian exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum that I thought looked a lot like Michael Jackson. I occasionally insert it into lectures in my museum class to add a moment of levity, but for some time now I have needed a much higher quality image. On my return visit this month I located the bust and took a much clearer and higher-resolution […]

Categories: Museums • Tags: Egypt, Field Museum, King of Pop, Michael Jackson, statue, time travel

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Great Food. Offensive Stickers.

August 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Just hours from completing this year’s summer road trip we enjoyed a great dinner in a midwestern diner at the Cedar Country Cooperative’s Exit 45 Restaurant. I enjoyed an open-faced hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. I only wish I had space for a slice of their awesome pies! Check out links from their Facebook page for photos. The welcoming homestyle cooking, however, couldn’t have clashed more with the offensive messages of some of the stickers for sale […]

Categories: Consumption, Nationalism, Objects of Power • Tags: bumper stickers, Cedar Country Cooperative, Cenex, English Only, God, language, stickers, Wisconsin, xenophobia

When Good Means Failing: Resisting Corporate Satisfaction Surveys

August 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning before checking out of our hotel, I noticed a letter on the desk in the room. The letter, written by the local hotel’s General Manager, mentioned that we might be receiving a satisfaction survey from corporate Best Western by email within a few weeks. The letter encouraged us to be sure and be “extremely satisfied” with our stay. In fact, if we weren’t extremely satisfied, the letter entreated us to contact the general manager directly by email or […]

Categories: Consumption, Corporate Culture, Discipline, Surveillance • Tags: Best Western, customer satisfaction, hotels, service industry, surveys

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Hotel Breakfast. August 10, 2014. USA.

August 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Food • Tags: breakfast, hotel

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Representationally Hacking a “Life Group” at the Royal Ontario Museum

August 9, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

You have a phrase called “Golden Age.” We do not want to be depicted the way were were, when we were first discovered in our homeland in North America. We do not want museums to continue to present us as something from the past. We believe we are very, very much here now, and we are going be very important in the future. —George Erasmus, Chief, Assembly First Nations 1992. While visiting the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) this past August […]

Categories: Exhibitions and Representation, Museums, Mythologies • Tags: display, first nations, hacks, life group, Mohawk, native peoples, Royal Ontario Museum

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Everyday Resistances: “Scrotumbank”

August 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

The scratchings of graffiti seem trivial and puerile on the surface but their tactical operations, often taken spontaneously on the fly with whatever writing implement might be on hand, offer an easily accessible lesson in everyday resistance. While ducking into a coffee shop across the street from the Royal Ontario Museum I caught a glimpse of this. The mind of a passerby thought of a creative way to add three letters and replace one in the name of the Scotiabank, the […]

Categories: Advertising, Play • Tags: everyday resistance, graffiti, Scotiabank, tactical operations

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Need Help Writing College Essays? 论文写作专家

August 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

No, I’m not running an essay writing service. I am, however, happy to see that I have career choices. Yesterday while enjoying a walk through the University of Toronto campus I noticed hundreds of fliers taped up on information boards and utility poles advertising the professional essay writing services. These were special, however, because they were entirely in Chinese (in both simplified and complex character versions) clearly targeting a specific client base. Most interesting to me was that even the […]

Categories: Consumption, Education, Fakes and Forgeries, Higher Education • Tags: cheating, college, 论文写作专家，essay writing